My son volunteers at school, over 500 miles away. When the school shut down and sent everyone home he was all alone in his apartment for months, working in the community. We worried about him every day. Kids that volunteer for this kind of work are a special breed. Your daughter should be commended and deserves all good things that come her way. I hope she stays safe.
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I agree with this. It seems that many here have decided that CDC guidelines are not enough and schools should be going beyond them. If your kids school wants to do more, and they gave a large enough endowment to be able to afford it, then more power to them. Go to it. But donât start saying that everyone should be following your standard and if they are not then they are doing something wrong. Most schools are not rich and canât afford the type of testing regime that some privates can.
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I came her to post that! The Business School was the only Harvard division that was fully in person last year.
At some point, the students who want to be the most careful can mask all of the time, take to go meals, not congregate in groups at all. Those who wish to try to get back to some kind of normal during their college years can make the opposite decision. Most colleges are requiring masks in class so those students who are most concerned should feel safe in class.
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It sounds like itâs going to be online for a week not the rest of the semester. Seems like a reasonable adjustment to try and correct a rise in cases.
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Literally what I was going to point out. The odds of that very imaginative, highly fictional scenario are lower than our kids crossing the street and having a life-altering accident, yet I do not tell them to become recluses and avoid all streets. I am in favor of them acting responsibly towards covid, of course, primarily through having gotten vaccinated and also with complying to their schools 3x per week testing scheme (now affordable really to all schools, as testing en masse is now only a few dollars per test and even we mere mortals can buy 2 Binaxnow tests for $14 at walmart, so $7 per test, so cost is no longer the issue at schools). With those extremely effective measures in place, I donât care if they mask (except where required) or socially distance or anything else, as that has reduced risk to themselves AND others so very substantially. Covid remains a major danger, but mostly for the unvaccinated or those (primarily older) with underlying conditions, not for vaccinated, healthy 20 year olds. And I havenât really seen a shred of evidence of students passing covid to local shopkeepers, etcâŠ.it really passes among people spending close time together, not in shopping situations.
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Again, this is not how public health works. The reason we continue to have serious problems is that we have a large contingent of people who really donât want to get their heads around the idea that public health can require putting individual liberties second to the wellbeing of all.
Thereâs a large concentration of such folks where I live â didnât used to be the case, but a combination of different types of greed elsewhere plus opportunity and ease of moving have meant that civic-minded types have left this state over the last 25 years â at first very reluctantly, and now they simply flee at the first opportunity. So no, we are a very large university that does not require either masks or vax, and that is why parts of the university are cratering: the underpaid staff and contingent faculty whoâve been supporting this place for years are looking at how theyâre not just showing up as some sort of volunteer corps anymore: theyâre being told to get in there as cannon fodder. And theyâre noping right out of the picture, and suddenly courses disappear, thereâs no one to get administrative answers from, lots of things just arenât happening anymore.
Tuition, naturally, has increased. After all, isnât it worth it to be back in person with a free personâs face shining and smiling in the classroom for all to see?
Your son is gold. EMTs are, as a class, among the best people Iâve ever met.
Take a look at what youâve written, though:
I expect heâs also vaccinated now, too. If you were to suggest to your average suburbanite that they be as careful as EMTs are â after all, highly contagious covid patients show up in restaurants as well as in ambulances â theyâd tell you to get lost. And thatâs the problem. Your son takes it seriously. Thatâs quite rare among people saying âWe have to learn to live with it,â because they specifically mean that they do not want to take that kind of care.
I have a young niece who is an EMT. In her ambulance, which is a small, confined, closed space with a patient with known covid, you bet she takes every precaution. The risk is extraordinarily high in that scenario. She does eat in restaurants, however, as there is much greater volume of air, and the odds of a covid positive person being anywhere in her vicinity are a teensy fraction of the odds in her ambulance. I have also used drastically different precautions when I have volunteered to do covid testing, as those people who I am literally touching are largely symptomatic or close contactsâvery high risk. Completely different scenario from most situations in life.
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For a 10 minute ambulance ride for a patient with known COVID-19, an EMT in the back with the patient would be estimated to have the following chance of getting COVID-19:
- EMT is Pfizer x2 vaccinated, wearing P100 respirator: 0.04% chance.
- EMT is Pfizer x2 vaccinated, wearing N95/KN95/FFP2 (sealed): 0.099% chance.
- EMT is Pfizer x2 vaccinated, wearing N95/KN95/FFP2 (sealing uncertain): 0.26% chance.
While these chances seem small, these are per 10 minute ride. Longer rides or more rides with COVID-19 patients obviously increase the risk. Also, the calculator does not account for the size of the indoor space (an ambulance is smaller than a typical room), so risk in the ambulance may be higher than calculated.
For comparison, when eating in an indoor restaurant for an hour with 5 people 10-15 feet away (other unassociated diners at other tables, considered to be average people in the US with respect to COVID-19) and no masks, the estimated chance is 0.019%, according to https://www.microcovid.org/?distance=tenFt&duration=60&interaction=oneTime&personCount=5&riskProfile=average&scenarioName=custom&setting=indoor&theirMask=none&topLocation=US&voice=normal&yourMask=none&yourVaccineDoses=2&yourVaccineType=pfizer
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Iâm talking about campuses that are 99 percent vaccinated. Let those kids have at it. Mask in class and in college buildings but, after that, letâs let them socialize. Those kids on those campuses who are worried can stay masked and with other kids who are masked. They can take to go meals.
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I agree. Once vaccinated, the physical risk to young people is extremely small, and older adults and the vulnerable can limit their time around them if they fear breakthru infections despite being boosted. The mental health toll on our young healthy citizens is considerable, particularly if imposed by those who still seek some type of total covid eradication. It wonât happen in my lifetime and we all need to go back to a routine.
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Oh, thatâs cute.
Most EMS calls will take 20 or more minutes before transport, first assessing matters from outside to see whether full gowning-up is warranted, then inside, taking vitals, getting a history, medication lists, speaking/dealing with family or others present, consulting/prodding/reassuring hesitant patient to the best course of action, pacifying family/friends, employ diplomacy when they insist it has to be hospital X âor elseâ⊠at some distant point in time the patient has to be prepared for transport.
But even that can get complicated depending on the patientâs weight, which floor the bedroom is on, how narrow the corridors/stairways. All while being exposed to various people who might be asymptomatic yet infected - while police and firefighters were barred from entering and assisting with carry-outs to preserve their availability.
At the heat of the pandemic, emergency rooms wouldnât permit immediate unload at their ambulance bay - but sent out staff to make an assessment in the rigs, pronouncing, and giving directions to the morgue instead.
And THAT is just the tip of the iceberg - the reality occasionally is much more intense. Listening/reading to armchair experts is painful.
10 minutes? On a busy night, you might spend almost as much time with the patient at the hospital, before they are a assigned their room, moved to their bed, you have made your report, finally can take your O2 cylinder, blankets and other thingsâŠ
I think that was UCBâs pointâŠ.that the risk in an ambulance is very significantly higher than the risk in almost all other scenarios in life, both because of the small confined space and the certainty that the patient has a bad case of covid. Thus necessitating the strong ppe and careful decontamination. I think UCB was saying that the ride would typically be longer and or the emt might spend their day having multiple exposures.
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Iâve adjusted that for normal restaurant density around here in a non-crammed environment â 10 people within 6 feet on average, in my state, which isnât very well vaxed â and I get âdangerously high riskâ, 5.5x my weekly risk budget.
Yup.
The fact that activities are not as dangerous as riding in an ambulance with a Covid patient does not mean that theyâre not dangerous. Itâs not particularly wise to set things relative to that benchmark.
Again, this isnât thinking from a public-health perspective, nor does it recognize that campuses arenât isolated. This is âI want to do x/I want my kid to be able to do x/our chance of illness is yz.â I, I, my, our. People â many people â come and go from every campus. There are communities nearby that supply the people who make the campus go, usually with tens of thousands of people at a minimum. And the towns are not 99 percent vaxed, and the kids are still capable of spreading the virus to anyone else on campus while vaxed. Yes, the chance is lower than if they were unvaxed because odds are lower that theyâll get infected in the first place, but weâve been talking for the last few weeks about campus after campus with breakthrough experience.
We have a pandemic. If the idea is to get back to something resembling beforetimes, then recognizing the value and minimal burden of masking is a very good idea, which is why the public-health people keep imploring everyone to put the masks back on after that amazing Mets outfield moment by Walensky in the bottom of the 3rd.
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What the town should be doing is imploring the Biden administration to stop pussyfooting around with its vax mandates. Weâre handling this in a ridiculous manner. Your water almost certainly has fluoride in it despite the witterings of the tinfoil hat crowd and has had for decades, but now weâre apparently going to try to talk it out with the tinfoil aficionados until a few hundred thousand more people have died.
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This has been interesting to me to follow. Harvard College (the undergrads) had a modest outbreak at the beginning of the year (about 65 cases in a week with approximately 7000 students.) and they quickly got it under control by increasing testing from once a week to 3x a week. So now Harvard College has seen only 2 positives in past 7 days. That was the only adjustmentâclasses and dining stayed in-person, no changes to gatherings, etc. Given the success of the increased testing frequency, I have been surprised that the university didnât roll that out to its graduate schools. It looks like there have been similar numbers of positives at HBS, but they only have enrollment of 1800! A much more serious outbreak. Iâm sure they could have avoided this size outbreak and the need for one week of online classes if they had joined Harvard College in its testing plan. Oh well, live and learn, Iâm sure it will get under control quickly but not due to the online classesâthey also just adopted 3x testing which should fix the problem.
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Iâm only talking about my kidsâ colleges where faculty, staff and students are virtually all vaccinated. Towns are highly vaxxed. No one is âcoming and goingâ since all visitors to events hAve to either show vaccine cards or sign up on an app ahead of time that includes a photo of their card and drivers license.
Do the kids leave campus to grab a bite to eat sometimes? Sure. The professors all go home at night and make their choices too. Iâm sure they socialize. But everyone is MASKED in class and other public buildings on campus. We donât ask faculty to go home and stay masked at home or not go out for a drink with their friends.
I understand there are only a handful of schools like this when compared to the 4000 colleges in the US but theyâve got it covered and those kids should definitely be able to have a social life.
I donât know what you think bigger colleges should be doing. Online school for the foreseeable future until when?
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